Thursday, August 26, 2010

I'll tell you what got switched- Aniston's old nose for a new one. In profile, she has hardly any nose left. It makes her look even odder. (Just so you are prepared for that if you go see this film.) On the upside, Juliette Lewis looks like she's taken a bath recently. Enough of that. Jason Bateman plays an inexplicably inarticulate Wall Street guy who still loves former girlfriend and current bestfriend Aniston. Aniston wants a baby but has no baby daddy in sight, so she picks a sperm donor. Bateman switches his you know what for the you know what in the cup. Aniston uses the you know what in the cup and has his baby, yada yada and the rest of the movie shows how alike the baby is to his daddy and how ..oh never mind. You don't want to go see this obvious and trite movie. Neither character makes any sense. The story is ridiculous. And the only good point is the way the little boy actor (Thomas Robinson) poignantly shows how a child really does want and need a dad- even if that dad isn't so hot. Maybe this movie will finally kill Aniston's career and we can be done with it. Oh dear, I must need something to drink.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. oh, excuse me, just the title now triggers some automatic response.This movie could not get any more boring. The scenery is lovely. But lawdy, it is a snoozer. First of all, I do not find any part of Julia Roberts (below her eyes) to be interesting or pretty. I find most of the time she is onscreen I am trying to figure out what people see in her. This script is flat and dead. No one is interesting. Everything feels superficial. And she runs from Rome to India to Bali with no real feeling that any of them mattered. And it goes on FOREVER. On the upside, you will be spared a trip to any of those places. On the downside, it will feel as if you went and stayed for months. Just not worth it.

As I was leaving the theater, I was trying to pick one word for this movie- and I think it is "authentic". Two lesbians (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are raising two kids who go find their sperm donor. Which, to me, any child would want to do. The need for identity is very strong, even if the guy is a disappointment in the end. In a hetero film, the sex scenes are often erotic. For some reason, the sex scenes in this are almost laughable. I am unsure as to whether or not that was deliberate. Mark Ruffalo, the donor, acts like a scruffy loser with a barrell of excuses in his arsenal. Yet he owns a successful restaurant- so he must have something going for himself. Bening looks 65. She really seems to not care, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe she is the only actress in Hollywood who believes in using her face in her acting roles. The film is graphic in spots, certainly not for kids under 16(?) because otherwise it'd just be creepy. Is it worth the monumental reviews it got? I don't think so. It is a little preachy, talky in spots. But it is worth the price of admission. If you have missed it, be sure to rent it. I didn't find it funny at all. So I'll call it a drama because whenever two women live together, there is drama.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Angelina Jolie is Evelyn Salt- cia agent, possible spy, kickass fighter and loving wife. The whole movie is a "is she or isn't she" sort of thing punctuated by relentless chases and running. Funny thing is that what annoyed me SO MUCH in Inception, was rather entertaining in SALT. Just one fight after another. Perhaps because it was unnecessary in Inception, and very necessary in a spy movie like this. Jolie is a bucket of miscellaneous adjectives, but the first on the list is skinny. Really, really skinny. She is also rather adept at staying in character because you actually believe that one day you'll find out that she is really working for the CIA in real life. I liked this movie and I wasn't prepared for that. I went in with bias. I'd read a few reviews that hated it-as in , skip it. But in the end, I thought it was just lightweight, fluffy, predictable and fun. Go figure.